Symptoms: scattered thinking

Does anyone experience these things please:

Scattered thinking - difficulty holding whole concepts together in my mind, like I understand pieces of the concept when someone explains it but then it kind of disappears. I can’t grasp the whole thing together. Unless I have a picture - I am better with diagrams or pictures.

I also get kind of stuck down a rabbit hole, thinking I am right about something or really focusing on a small none important detail and it can take a while (or someone repeatedly persuading me I am wrong) for me to adjust my thinking and see a bigger picture. 

I find that I don’t always know how I feel about something until later and I can sometimes feel really muddled and not be sure of how I feel, like what the truth is.

I can see different sides of a situation but I only feel one thing at a time. Like it’s hard to hold opposing feelings in my head at the same time and see a balanced picture.

Difficulty making decisions - Like in work, prioritising. And  when someone asks a question. I want to tell them the truth and I can think of so many options and I am not always sure which one is true. I just think of the options and then I am stuck. Like when someone says get insight into your behaviour - how do you get insight? I can think of the options but I don’t know what the answer is.

I can not decide if I want to socialise. I like being with small groups of people or one to one but I get agitated if I think I won’t get my own space. I do pretty much always enjoy seeing people when I do but I get stuck either not seeing people or I get on a social role, I see one person and then feel like meeting with others. I prefer to do activities with friends or chatting for a few hours but a whole day is a lot for me. Even though I enjoy it if I have not seen the person for a while but I find I want my own space again after.

Parents
  • Much of this is very familiar to what I experience.

    Needing to see something to better understand it, struggling with priorities and decision making, getting a touch stuck on focusing on a small detail ... from what I gather about autism brain processing, these things would be pretty consistent with that.

    I'm pretty new to autism myself but I've been reading up on the research papers on brain processing to get an idea about this.

    I expect others might be able to better guide on the differences and overlap between autism and having autism traits.

    I haven't had a diagnosis but I figured that I have enough traits, and they're causing me enough trouble, to justify joining this forum and reading as much as I can to help me understand myself better.

    I gather that there are quite a fair few people here who are self-diagnosed but not 'officially' diagnosed and also people like you who have been confirmed to have traits but have not been given an official autism diagnosis.

    I guess it depends what you're looking for? Is it an understanding of yourself? In which case knowing you have autistic traits is a useful step on that path. If it is to get specific support then let us know.

    There are quite a lot of forum posts where members have written out their opinions on the benefits and disadvantages of seeking and getting a diagnosis. So these could be tracked down if that would help? 

Reply
  • Much of this is very familiar to what I experience.

    Needing to see something to better understand it, struggling with priorities and decision making, getting a touch stuck on focusing on a small detail ... from what I gather about autism brain processing, these things would be pretty consistent with that.

    I'm pretty new to autism myself but I've been reading up on the research papers on brain processing to get an idea about this.

    I expect others might be able to better guide on the differences and overlap between autism and having autism traits.

    I haven't had a diagnosis but I figured that I have enough traits, and they're causing me enough trouble, to justify joining this forum and reading as much as I can to help me understand myself better.

    I gather that there are quite a fair few people here who are self-diagnosed but not 'officially' diagnosed and also people like you who have been confirmed to have traits but have not been given an official autism diagnosis.

    I guess it depends what you're looking for? Is it an understanding of yourself? In which case knowing you have autistic traits is a useful step on that path. If it is to get specific support then let us know.

    There are quite a lot of forum posts where members have written out their opinions on the benefits and disadvantages of seeking and getting a diagnosis. So these could be tracked down if that would help? 

Children
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